Clint Eastwood’s American Halftime

Is it halftime in America? And how can we manage the clock? On Sunday, after Madonna sang in the Super Bowl’s halftime show, she was upstaged by Clint Eastwood, who entered in the shadows, walking off the field into a tunnel, in an ad that was paid for by Chrysler. The ad was a two-minute movie that started any number of fights. Was it about cars or cities or the seventies; did it glorify the auto bailout or ignore it? The Obama Administration tweeted it happily, but some union supporters didn’t like it; Karl Rove, of all people, said, “I was frankly offended”—brave, considering the growl with which Eastwood said, “This country can’t be knocked out with one punch. We get right back up again, and when we do the world is going to hear the roar of our engines.” (There can be power in a mixed metaphor.) Most everyone did agree that the ad was strong, with lines like these:

It’s halftime in America, too. People are out of work and they’re hurting. And they’re all wondering what they’re going to do to make a comeback. And we’re all scared, because this isn’t a game.

The people of Detroit know a little something about this. They almost lost everything. But we all pulled together, now Motor City is fighting again…

Detroit’s showing us it can be done. And, what’s true about them is true about all of us.

Eastwood isn’t a Democrat; he may have an affinity for Ron Paul. When he talked about the ad on Monday, it was to a producer for “The O’Reilly Factor,” on Fox. (“I just want to say that the spin stops with you guys.”) Eastwood said, “l am certainly not politically affiliated with Mr. Obama. It was meant to be a message just about job growth and the spirit of America.” (Chrysler’s C.E.O., who is Italian, said Monday that Eastwood was “expressing his views,” and was donating his fee to charity.) He added, “If any Obama or any other politician wants to run with the spirit of that ad, go for it.” Still, Mitt Romney opposed the auto bailout; Obama will campaign, in part, on the boast that he saved Detroit, which was enough for Rove and others to call this an ad for the President.

That view underestimates Eastwood’s ad, though. Its iconography runs deeper, along a less obvious political course. It’s not about Obama or even, mostly, about Detroit, but about time—in the life of a man, as much as a nation. As he speaks, the camera explores the city and the country, and the lines of Eastwood’s face:

I’ve seen a lot of tough eras, a lot of downturns in my life. And, times when we didn’t understand each other. It seems like we’ve lost our heart at times. When the fog of division, discord, and blame made it hard to see what lies ahead.

“Division, discord, and blame” is illustrated by scenes of a rally—not in Detroit, but in Madison, Wisconsin. The marchers in question were out trying to preserve collective-bargaining rights for teachers; seeing the ad, some took Eastwood’s remark as a rebuke, all the more so since the agency that made it had digitally altered some signs, removing references to unions. In fairness, though, most viewers, not recognizing the protest, wouldn’t see any anti-labor slight. What’s more telling than what was excised from the signs is the image that the ad makers swapped in instead: an alarm clock.

A ticking clock, in Wisconsin: When and where have we ended up? In a Detroit, apparently, that incorporates many cities, including its own past and present. (Scenes were also filmed in New Orleans, Petaluma, and elsewhere.) One of the ad’s tricks is to make an image of a facade with nothing behind it feel inspirational—not a sign of decay, but a classical ruin in a modern city, like the Roman Colosseum. (Madonna, who was simultaneously a Valkyrie, a cheerleader, and the Queen of the Nile, wasn’t the only one who telescoped time. She is fifty-three; Eastwood is eighty-one.) “We find a way through tough times, and if we can’t find a way, then we’ll make one,” Eastwood, back in his stadium, says. The ad ends:

Yeah, it’s halftime, America. And, our second half is about to begin.

One wonders, hearing that, if halftime means that we are halfway done. If the United States only has two hundred and thirty-six years left, is that a little or a lot for a republic? (And is it enough time to build our moon colony?) Eastwood, whether he meant to or not, is engaging in a kind of blasphemy, but it’s a useful heresy.

We’ve often been asked to think of the time of our country’s life as a perpetual dawn—“morning in America,” as in Ronald Reagan’s ad. (Reagan takes credit, among other things, for sixty-five hundred weddings a day.) Reagan isn’t alone: Romney and Obama sometimes seem to be in a competition to describe the brightness of the coming American day. Somewhere along the line, the rising sun Benjamin Franklin said he saw in a chair decoration at the Constitutional Convention has become a sort of supernova. (In Eastwood’s ad, in contrast, the sun is all over the sky.) Can a person even suggest that it’s not always six in the morning here without being accused of accepting decline? American exceptionalism has somehow come to assume an ability to stop all the clocks.

That’s what makes Eastwood’s ad so powerful. It doesn’t pretend that we’re dallying in an endless pre-game show, or that you can always tell the timekeeper to put a few seconds back on. “We’re all scared, because this isn’t a game”; “we’ve lost our heart at times”: those aren’t statements made from a place of weakness. A hint of mortality can be invigorating. The sports setup does not prevent this from being the most grown-up ad of the season, in that it is about growing up, and growing old, and still stronger, even when the picture is of a child looking out of a car window. Also, it is not unpatriotic to recognize that this is so. Nor is it defeatist. Toward the end, Eastwood says,

All that matters now is what’s ahead. How do we come from behind? How do we come together? And, how do we win?

On any given Sunday, the saying goes, either team can win. On any given Tuesday, when the polls are open, the same thing is true. That’s why they play the games; that’s why we vote.

Amy Davidson Sorkin, a New Yorker staff writer, is a regular contributor to Comment for the magazine and writes a Web column, in which she covers war, sports, and everything in between.